why the fonts in word 2013 are blurry?

Just "upgraded" to Office 2013 from 2010, and 5 minutes in I start thinking I need glasses. Until I open up my old Notepad and see everything is still nice and crispy there. Say what? 140$ for a program that shows blurry letters as opposed to the old Notepad!?

Found this thread, but alas, no matter how I change "hardware graphics acceleration", "subpixel positioning" or "cleartype" the letters are still blurry in Office 2013. Sure I can see a difference depending on the settings, but the letters still look alive crawling around on my screen. I'm on a desktop, Windows 7, running 1920x1080, everything's updated.

So, Microsoft, update?

A lot of problems with Office 2013 are caused by third party (non-Microsoft) applications.  This is my (expanding) list of things to try when Office 2013\365 won’t start or crashes:

See the Article “Why can’t I start my Office 2013 application at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/support/why-cant-i-start-my-office-2013-application-HA104011864.aspx

Refer to the following website for information on repairing Office 2013\365:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/repair-or-remove-office-2010-HA010357402.aspx

See Office 2013 install woes - http://office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=1834

See the KnowledgeBase article “Office 2013 applications crash on launch at the splash screen” at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2813143

Or see the KnowledgeBase article Error: “Something went wrong and we can't sign you in right now” when trying to install Office 2013 at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2811180/en-us/

Also see my response in

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2013\_release-word/microsoft-word-2013-has-stopped-working/67b81016-849f-481a-bce5-bf04797ac03b

Do you have Abbyy Finereader installed on the PC? A number of people have reported that removing it overcomes problems with 2013.  See:

Office programs may crash with the FineReader add-in installed at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2755838

Do you have “Fun Tools” add-in? A number of people have reported that removing it overcomes problems with 2013

Do you have Toshiba Book Reader installed on the PC?  It has been reported that uninstalling that brings Office back to working status.

Do you have the Acrobat PDFMaker add-in.  It has been reported that uninstalling that overcomes an issue with a message appearing that states "The document contains macros. Macro support for this application is disabled. Features requiring VBA are not available. Would you like to open this document as a read only?"

Also see: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2013\_release-word/microsoft-word-has-stopped-working-when-i-close/8375b5b6-4f7e-46ed-a02b-90152ecad287#LastReply and

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_home-word/word-and-excel-2013-crashing-on-windows-7/5389390c-e989-4c8e-8fe0-62673f1410ce?page=4#LastReply

It appears that there may be some hardware incompatibilities as well.  If you have the NVIDIA driver NVWGF2UM.DLL, try renaming it as: NVWGF2UM.old as was mentioned in:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_2013\_release-word/microsoft-word-has-stopped-working-when-i-close/8375b5b6-4f7e-46ed-a02b-90152ecad287#LastReply

From the File tab, select Options and then click on Advanced and then in the Display section of the dialog, check the box for Disable hardware graphics acceleration

For the error message "There was a problem sending the command to the program", use Windows Explorer to access the C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office15 folder and right click on WINWORD.EXE then on Properties, go to the Compatibility tab and uncheck all the boxes.  It has also been reported that the problem can be overcome by editing the registry at HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.Document.12\shell\Open and deleting the ddeexec key.

The ddeexec can also be deleted from

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Word.DocumentMacroEnabled.12\shell\Open.

That fix is described at ...

http://www.dilloway.co.uk/there-was-a-problem-sending-the-command.html

It has been reported that uninstalling FastPictureView and FastPictureViewer Pro… overcomes the issue of the Minimize, Maximize, Close and Help buttons not being visible in Office 2013.

If you have a Canon 8350 printer, try using the Canon MF8000 UFRI LT XPS driver as detail in the post by Riad Amstha on April 14 in the thread at:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_365hp-word/office-2013-crashes-with-canon-8350-printer/e2bf6530-92e0-47ef-b6ec-e803a91793d0?page=3#LastReply

Thanks for the list. I've been pulling out my hair since last night (I've got a job to do; writing) and went through the ideas for fixing Office. Also tried reinstalling the drivers for video card and monitor (even though there've been no updates since last), played around with the graphical settings for my video card drivers, OS color settings, monitor settings, the works.

Don't know where along the road my problem was fixed, but the ants are now dead; my letters are rock solid as in every other program, such as good old Notepad :D

Now, back to work, and thanks again for the help :)

I installed Office 2013 on clean installs of Windows 8 and later 8.1. No other third party software whatsoever had been installed. In both cases the text was so blurry I could not use Office 2013 at all.

Doug. I'm calling you out in regards to your long-winded post. 95% of it has absolutely no relevance to the blurry text problem.

Your post is just an attempt to justify your existence.  Got to be seen to be doing something eh?  Even if is irrelevant.  Wally of "Dilbert" fame would be proud of you.

The reality is that Microsoft have no sensible customer-focused answer to the blurry text problem.